Nature’s Lessons in Patience

It’s a few days before the official start of spring here in southeastern Pennsylvania but winter is very much in control.

We are still digging out from a late-winter storm earlier in the week that brought us ten inches of snow. This Saturday morning I woke up to freezing rain. More sleet and snow are predicted for the rest of the weekend.

This all comes after some unseasonably warm days in early March that gave everyone around here a case of spring fever. I was even able to pick a bunch of early blooming daffodils from the bumper crop that every year rings my house in yellow.

Now, alas, all of those daffodils are buried under a crust of snow. I worry that they won’t put on much of a show this April.

I want spring and warmth. I want to turn off the heat and open the doors and windows. I want to walk around the house in shorts and sandals. I want to get out on the water and go kayaking and fly fishing.

I want to pick daffodils and put them on the table and give a bunch to Rachael. I want to plant vegetables in the garden and dig my fingers into the sun-warmed soil.

I want, I want, I want.

We know, through the law of attraction, that we manifest in our lives that which we want and focus on. Our wanting is a magnet that draws filings made of the same iron as the magnet itself. The stronger that magnet of desire, the more filings we get in our lives.

If we focus on the negative – problems, dysfunctional relationships, illness, lack of money, lack of anything – we will get more of those things.

If, rather, we focus on gratitude and abundance – all that is good and right in our lives – we will get more of those good things.

But the manifesting process, like nature itself, moves according to its own clock. We can’t rush it any more than we can make flower bulbs blossom by shouting at them.

We must be patient as we wait for the manifesting process to reveal itself. It could take days. It could take months. It could take years. It’s not up to us to decide when and how our wants will be revealed.

This is a problem for me, given the type of person that I am.

Patience doesn’t come naturally to me. I am an impatient driver. I am impatient in my work and in my writing. I can be impatient in relationships.

I am a highly driven, goal-oriented person. I have a lot of things I want to do and I want to see them realized. Novels and stories I want to write. Places I want to go. People I want to see. Things I want to fix and have.

Put obstacles between me and my desires, and I get impatient.

I’ve learned, unfortunately the hard way in my life, that all that my impatience accomplishes is to make the present miserable, while getting me no closer to that which I want and desire.

Impatience is the ultimate rejection of the present. We want to be somewhere other than where are now. That somewhere may be a place, a feeling, a condition, a new job, a new relationship, health, money, whatever.

The truth, taught to us by nature every day, is that only the present is real. Everything else is a concept that exists only in our human heads.

What sense does it make to reject the present – that which is real – for that which is not real? What good does it do, really?

Yes, the mere act of wanting implies that we don’t currently have that which we desire. But when we reject the present for something that doesn’t exist, we put obstacles in the manifesting process. We make it harder to get that which we want.

Only by fully accepting our present circumstances, without terms or conditions, can we manifest into our lives that which we want.

This isn’t easy to do, especially when we are suffering. When I was in the depths of depression fifteen years ago, I wanted only to be somewhere else than where I was.

I was hellbent on fixing myself and whatever it was within me that caused me to get depressed and anxious. I searched years for the magic key to my inner box of horrors.

It was only when I gave up trying to fix myself – when I fully accepted where I was, pain and all – that I began the healing process.

When it comes to manifesting, nature has always been my best teacher, and this winter has something yet to teach me about learning to stay in the present.

So I will enjoy the last of this winter, knowing those daffodils will blossom when they’re good and ready.